


Venus

by cecilantro



Series: 100 Days Of Ficlets [34]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: Molly and Caleb lie on a roof and stare at the stars for a bit.(Caleb has a muchbetterstar he wants to stare at.)





	Venus

**Author's Note:**

> so much hurt recently i just wanted something not shitty
> 
> inspired by [Venus by Sleeping At Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwMN8QtWCic)

Caleb hasn’t climbed out of a window onto a roof in _years_ , he was a much younger, stronger man the last time he attempted it. But he pulls himself up and out tonight, ignoring the burn in his shoulders as he takes his whole body weight onto his arms.  
There’s some scrambling, he quickly catches the few shingles that threaten to fall loose from the gently slanted roof, makes his way a little higher, then settles himself, and lies flat on his back to stare at the sky.  
He traces constellations mentally, connecting stars, digging out the tags of memory he knows that he has about the lore behind them, what they’re meant to be, who they represent.  
He hears scuffling from the window, doesn’t even flinch, he has nothing to fear from Mollymauk.  
Molly scoots across the roof on all fours until he comes to settle beside Caleb, straightens his coat under him, lies flat on his back in a mirror of the wizard.  
“Didn’t realise other people did this when they needed to relax.” Molly’s voice is almost a chuckle, Caleb gives a huff of a laugh,  
“I used to, when I was, was a lot younger.” He tells Molly, “I stopped, for a long while. It is only because of you that I am here again.”  
They slip into companionable silence for a while.  
Caleb feels Molly’s hand inch across towards his, they brush one another on the cold rooftop, it’s a distracting electric sensation.  
He smiles.  
Molly’s hand creeps further, until it’s fully laid over Caleb’s and he can feel Molly’s heat seeping into him slowly.

They stay up there for what feels like forever, ends up being more like an hour, when Caleb sits up to stretch, Molly doesn’t move.  
He looks over, Molly is asleep on the rooftop, the hand that he’d had free rests on his chest, fingertips laid over his new necklace. Caleb lets out a soft, breathy laugh, Molly looks so peaceful and vulnerable in sleep, it’s hard to believe that the tiefling in front of him is _his_ Mollymauk, the one that had just hours before offered a group of Crowns Guard a tarot reading whilst the remainder of the Nein snuck around, the same Mollymauk that had spent an hour meticulously painting bullshit illness onto his dick, only to fake-vomit and pop some blood instead.  
Caleb reaches over and brushes Molly’s hair back from his face and neck, gives himself a chance to study the detail in the lines of the peacock’s feathers as it creeps down into his neckline, ruffled shirt collar obscuring a work of art that Caleb wants to run his fingers across.  
It’s not often that Molly stays still long enough for Caleb to get a good look at him, so he takes the opportunity greedily, studies each and every gem, chain link, thread of metal in and around his horns, categorically documents the way that the moonlight hits Molly’s hair and the way it seems to turn blue in the night light. The neutral, peaceful expression on his face, how surprisingly thick Molly’s eyelashes are, the structure of his face. Caleb’s fingers wander, too, skimming gently over the necklace chains, feeling the enchantment on the Periapt pulse under his fingertips.  
He drinks in and memorises the patterns on Molly’s coat, the colours, the threads, and when he feels it’s enough, for now, he finally looks away.  
How is he going to get Molly down without waking him up?  
He blinks himself into Frumpkin’s eyes, instructs his familiar to go to the window. It’s beside Nott’s bed, she’s still awake, fiddling with something or other in the corner, Frumpkin jumps up and noses at the window pane until she looks over.  
“Caleb?”  
Frumpkin mewls an affirmation, paws at the pane again, and she looks to it.  
“Open it?”  
Mewl of affirmation, again, she puts down whatever she was doing and moves to throw the window open and lean out.  
Caleb blinks out of Frumpkin’s eyes and moves to the edge, leans over until he spots Nott. She waves at him, and he flinches as she wobbles against the open window, but she disappears back inside without incident and he breathes a sigh. He looks back to Mollymauk and thinks for a moment.  
He arcs a hand up, twist and spiral to draw the string from the twig between his fingers, mumbles an incantation, hears the telltale clatter of Shmidt’s arrival.  
Shmidt picks Molly up and carries him alongside Caleb, pauses as Caleb lowers himself down to his window and in, he leans out and addresses Nott without looking at her,  
“Nott, hold, please.”  
It’s something she knows, it’s not the first time that Caleb has hung out of a second-storey window and asked for her aid in counterbalancing, she grabs the lapels of his coat and digs her heels in against the bed.  
Shmidt, as carefully as he can, lowers the sleeping Molly into Caleb’s arms, and disappears with a _puff_ , dropping the tiefling the last few inches. He sleeps, even through the jolt, and Caleb grits his teeth with the extra weight,  
“ _Pull_ .” He hisses to Nott, and she does, he slides in the window with Molly in his arms and she falls back off of the bed, caught only by her own quick reactions, she skitters into a Beau-esque landing, Caleb is dragged to his ass on her bed.  
He meets her eyes and begins chuckling, she scowls at him,  
“That was stupid, Caleb! What if one of you had fallen?”  
She keeps her voice down, something Caleb appreciates, he picks himself off of her bed and moves toward the door, instead. Frumpkin manages to jump up the wall and bow the handle, the door opens at his will, Caleb gives him a nod.  
“I did not want to wake him. Look, he looks so peaceful.” Caleb’s eyes move back to Molly, who is becoming something of a dead weight now, he waits for no reply from Nott, moves out and to the room that Molly shares with Fjord.  
It’s locked.  
There’s no light from the crack under the door, Molly and Fjord had probably settled down to sleep when Molly had joined Caleb on the roof to stargaze, Caleb curses in Zemnian. His bed, then, he supposes- Molly has no dignity, he will not mind cramming into the single with Caleb.

Nott is tucking herself up when Caleb comes back in, she frowns at Molly when she spots him.  
“Mollymauk will be staying with us this evening.” Caleb tells her, she grumbles something or other that Caleb doesn’t understand and pulls the covers up, turns hard her back to Caleb. He will have to make it up to her in the morning.  
He settles Molly against the wall in his bed, glad of the fact that, aside from his ridiculous coat, the tiefling had been otherwise dressed to sleep. Caleb eases Molly out of the coat, it takes nearly ten minutes, he folds it and puts it beside the bed on top of his own.  
He breaks from Molly to move over to Nott, she’s asleep now, but all the same he leans down and kisses her hair, whispers, “ _Schlaf gut._ ” as his nightly ritual demands, and moves back to pull the covers up and over Mollymauk.  
His last stop is to snuff out the flame in the lamp, and, finally finished, he climbs into bed beside Molly.  
There’s such little room on the bed, he reasons, that’s _definitely_ why he scooches himself under Molly’s arm to rest his head on Molly’s chest, instead.  
It’s the best, deepest sleep he has had in a long time.

Molly wakes him in the morning, accidentally, by shifting to cuddle him properly. Caleb’s so wired for sudden attack that the weight across his side has his eyes shooting open, but Molly follows it quickly with a kiss to the top of his head, and then everything is okay again.  
“Morning.” Molly greets him when he turns his head up to face him, “Did you carry me from the roof.”  
“Between myself and Schmidt, yes, and Nott helped somewhat, too.” Caleb’s warm and sleepy, he nuzzles a little into the crook of Molly’s neck, Molly chuckles in return.  
“I’m glad you decided to pick up my habit.” he tells Caleb, quietly, warmly, “I enjoy your company.”  
“Yes, I’d gathered.” the arm Caleb has around Molly’s waist squeezes, “By this.”  
Molly rolls his eyes affectionately and tilts his head to bump Caleb’s.  
“C’mon, time to kiss and get up.”  
“Is it not kiss and make up?”  
“I changed it to what _I_ want to do.” Molly grins at him, the bright confidence again, Caleb smiles and tilts his chin up so that Molly can kiss him.  
“You know, you’re cute when you sleep.” Caleb teases afterwards, as he extracts himself, “Must be because you have your mouth closed.”  
“And you’re cute with yours occupied.” Molly snarks, and before Caleb can retort, he leans around and kisses the response straight off of his tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> ive written like 4k words today. end me.


End file.
